Read Clash magazine’s interview with Stephen Stills from our October 2008 issue.
Stephen Stills is one of the few artists whose fame was so globally immense that at one point The Beatles actually feared being toppled from their peak.
The supergroup Crosby, Stills and Nash (and later Young) took its members from the Sixties’ leading bands (David Crosby from The Byrds, Graham Nash from The Hollies, Stephen and Neil Young from Buffalo Springfield) and formed a vocal harmony group that typified the hippy optimism and political concerns of the decade’s end. Their success was incredible, and the group have survived – through various incarnations – for forty years.
From his days leading Buffalo Springfield, through CSN(&Y), his early Seventies group Manassas, and his own solo material, Stills has demonstrated his amazing talents as a multi-instrumentalist and a dazzling lead guitar player – owed in small part to his close friendship with Jimi Hendrix. His was the rasping anchor voice to Crosby’s silken accompaniment and Nash’s high harmonies, and his signature songs – ‘For What It’s Worth’, ‘4 & 20’, ‘Suite: Judy Blue Eyes’, etc – display a formidable knack for songwriting.
Nine months after his successful operation for prostate cancer, Stills is back doing what he does best, enjoying a flurry of activity that promises many exciting future releases, plus a unique new solo performance that offers a personal insight to the master musician. Ahead of his long-awaited return to the UK, Clash was delighted to share a conversation with the legend in which he laughed throughout, and with much enthusiasm, proving there’s life in the old dog yet.
You had quite a nomadic early life, moving from town to town (Stephen’s father was in the military). Do you think this played a part in your pursuing a life in music rather than a ‘normal’ job?
Well, it’s beginning to feel more and more like a regular job – y’know, buses, trains and automobiles, “What’s for catering?” (Laughs) But I haven’t lost a step as far as the joy that I take in my job. I mean, it’s just a grand dodge to say the least! (Laughs)
When did you first get into music?
My father bought me a set of drums in order to protect the furniture. Then I got into school bands and got pretty decent pretty quickly; I learnt some theory. There was swing band and there was ensemble band, and then I fell into a bad crowd… I played drums first in a band called The Radars – I was eleven – and then played guitar in a folk group and then managed to get an electric guitar and played in a group that a friend of mine had formed in order to satisfy his brother’s assignment of getting a band for the fraternity party. So Jeff Williams got me and Don Felder in the same band, and that lasted a few shows. Then I took off for Central America and learned a different piece of music, and then came back to go to the University of Florida. I stayed perhaps, oh, half an hour or forty-five minutes, you know, signed up, went to a couple of classes and said, “Well, I know what I’m doing”. Then I went off to New Orleans and then to New York to see what was up. That’s the short version. (Laughs)
You played and sang around Greenwich Village in the early Sixties. What was that scene like and what other artists were on the scene?
Bobby Dylan tells me, “If you can remember who was there, the scene is set!” We had missed that first wave of people, you know, Dylan and all those, but you could always go play. Every night was open mic night, and you passed the hat, and I did fine. On the way home from work, I walked past the immortal Blue Note [club] and got to stop in and see Miles [Davis] and Dizzy Gillespie and Thelonious Monk and, God, every week there was somebody incredible. The Village Gate [club] was around the corner – I saw Nina Simone there. And then Simon And Garfunkel… Lenny Bruce was at The Cafe Au Go Go.
Then I went off with these four characters, a leftover from the past, and we did a tour in Canada. The first place we go was a place called Fort William, Ontario, now known as Thunder Bay. The first Saturday night, the club owner comes and says, “Oh, by the way, between your sets we’re gonna have a guest artist who’s a local boy from Winnipeg and he’s gonna play with his trio.” Well, they proceeded to set up their amps and everything, then do exactly what I’d been thinking I wanted to do ever since seeing A Hard Day’s Night – sing folk songs with really good electric guitars and a really swinging rhythm section with good songs and decent words. [The local boy was Neil Young.]
You got together properly with Neil in Los Angeles in 1966 when you formed Buffalo Springfield together. At the end of 1966, you wrote ‘For What It’s Worth’ as your reaction to the L.A. riots. It also became an anthem for those in Vietnam. What significance does that song have when you play it now?
Quite frankly I’m not that fond of rock stars lecturing about events which they have only vague knowledge of, so every time I’ve done one I’ve tried to take the position of a chronicler. There are a couple of songs with hectoring hyperbole in them, but this song had been building for a while, and then I walked into that silly incident on Sunset Strip, which no one has got right as far as history goes. All the cops were on one side of the street, and they were having a funeral for a bar [on the other]. The first words out of my mouth were, “Turn the car around! We don’t want anything to do with this!” I went back to my house in Topanga Canyon and wrote it in about fifteen minutes, then cut it the next day and – boom – put it out.
Buffalo Springfield only really lasted, what, two years?
Oh my God! This whole time frame that I’ve explained only lasted a few months! (Laughs) Three bands, two continents, back and forth across the country… It just didn’t stop. Fundamentally, you could fairly say that I got a job in the first place I went and asked and just never looked back.
Is it true that Crosby, Stills and Nash originally auditioned for The Beatles’ Apple Records?
Yes. We went to England to rehearse because Graham was a bit (more) well off than us and we figured, ‘Well, we’ll just hide in a flat somewhere and no one will be the wiser and we can really polish all these vocals and then make this album really quickly.’ Well, that lasted about a day, and suddenly [David] Crosby and I are being chased by incensed fans down the street – chicks throwing stuff at us, going, “You’re gonna break up our Hollies!” But Graham [Nash] had one foot out the door when he got here [to L.A.], and then fell in love with Joni [Mitchell] and that was that. I didn’t know that David had already met Graham.
Cass Elliott [from The Mamas And Papas] ran into me in front of The Troubadour and she said, “Do you think you and David might do with a third voice?” And I said, “Well yeah, absolutely.” She says, “Okay, when he calls you tomorrow or the next day and tells you to come to my house, get in the car. That’s all I’ll say.”
Apparently your manager never passed on a message to you that Jimi Hendrix was asking you to be bass player in his Experience. Is this true?
CSN got to England and I just went, “I’m staying! I don’t have a girlfriend back home. I’m gonna stay here and just muck about. It’ll work out.” Over the course of the next few weeks I ran into Jimi and I had my assistant with me who was from New Orleans, and he just gravitated to us. He was just dying for an American face. So we became chums.
He would come over and get out of the clubs and take a few minutes to recover from whatever people had been shoving down his throat and have some coffee and then we would sit and talk music and talk playing and talk philosophy for hours, and in the process he began to show me certain things about playing lead guitar.
I’d say, “But Jimi, look at your thumb. Your thumb is as long as my hand! How can I get [it] over there?” So the story – I did not find this out for years – it was in [Mitch] Mitchell’s book – we’d talked about doing something, you know? I had a commitment and he had a commitment and we were gonna get together, but there was a time there in between when I was back in California and had an accident and broken the little bones in my left hand. So I’m in a cast and calling into the office every day. And apparently, according to Mitchell, at that time, Jimi’s office was desperately trying to find me, and David Geffen just stalled them endlessly. “I don’t know where he is. I’ll pass on the message.” And so Jimi did something else. I would have gladly put down the guitar and played bass for him.
So what’s this story about you recently finding tapes of an album that you made with Jimi?
We have discovered these tracks. There weren’t as many as we would have liked. We listened to them… It was [recorded] very late.
There’s three reels of somebody trying to think of something to do and it lasting about six bars and then… (Laughs) Oh my God, it would have been nice if somebody would have struck up something, but everyone was waiting for someone else to start! But there are two or three things that we’ve managed to put together and I’ve finally come to an arrangement with the [Hendrix] estate.
There’s one thing that we did – I did a mumbly vocal – and I finally just – the day before yesterday – found the original lyrics, which are pretty damn good. So if I can get back to that same tone of voice I’ll put that on and we’ll get that out.
Wow. That would be amazing to hear.
Yeah. We had to do some corrections and I ended up replacing my own part. That night I played bass and Jimi was there but I wasn’t very good. So I did it in one take and it sounds fine; it sounds like I was there.
That’s what we’ve got and we’re hoping that we can get this thing put to bed at the earliest opportunity. He did play on one of my songs; that one and the coherent one were going to be the start of our album, and then – circumstances being what they were – he said, “You go ahead and put that out and we’ll get back to it.” Then we said our goodbyes and I think that’s the last time I talked to him.
Since 1975 you’ve only released about five solo albums. You’ve obviously done other work in the meantime, but why are your own things so infrequent?
Basically I would make the same mistake every time I had something cooking – playing it for Graham. He’d say, “Oh great – we’ve got another album. Let’s go!” And then it would turn into another CSN album, and with the usual loss of control.
Last year it was revealed you’d been diagnosed with prostate cancer, and you underwent an operation back in January. How are you feeling now?
Well, funnily enough it was beginning to disturb me that, you know, for a couple of years I was just off my feet and something wasn’t right – I’m pretty good about going to the doctors and doing check-ups – and then the numbers on the PSA [Prostate Specific Antigen] test suddenly doubled, and in that instance there’s really but one choice.
There’s a couple of procedures that might work, blah blah blah, but there was nothing to do but yank it out – get it out of there. And so in a very decisive fashion, I did it on my birthday. That was in January, and I’m completely cancer free. The procedure actually sort of gave everything a chance, and I’ve lost thirty pounds quite easy, like it was nothing. I’m 180 or thereabouts all the time now – it’s easier on my knees, I’m fitter, I just feel great.
How have CSN&Y stayed friends for so long? What’s the basis of your friendship?
(Laughs) We stay away from each other when we’re not working, so every time that we show up for another plan, it’s like, ‘Oh, there you are, mate…blah blah blah’. I’ll have a little wine, and when Crosby gets cranky, you know, Graham will do the translating if you will.
CSN&Y’s anti-war stance is still very strong, as demonstrated on the new live album, ‘Deja Vu Live’, recorded on your recent tour where you performed tracks from Neil’s ‘Living With War’ album, amongst others. Did those anti-war songs go down well with the crowds?
It went down well for the most part. There were a couple of cities that I warned them about, you know, they just don’t like being lectured to, and why don’t we tone it down just a little bit. “No, no, that’s the point.” I threw up my hands and did my job, but it really taught me a lesson. It’s not that I’m trepidatious about challenging an audience, it’s that I feel our place is as chroniclers, not as lecturers, and can advocate to an extent, but this hectoring hyperbole, I don’t like hearing it from anybody, especially when they talk between songs. It just drives me nuts. I’ve been involved in the political process…
Every election since 1960 I’ve done something, you know, and what you saw in that film [‘Deja Vu Live’] is what I like to do now – I’d much rather a small backyard house where I can speak in a more personable manner to the issues that concern them, and assign them the responsibility to deliver a certain number of people to the polls. It’s not hard, and I’m not presuming upon their intelligence – I think everybody gets it; it’s just the approach I prefer. We’ve got a big election coming up, which is one of the reasons I’m delighted to be going to England, and then I’ll get home just in time to spend a couple of weeks doing events and senate races and get this thing brought home. And probably Election Day, I will go to Florida, where I vote, and get a band and go drive people to the polls.
What are your hopes for an America under a new President?
Barack Obama couldn’t be a better choice for me. First of all, he’s lived a multicultural childhood. I lived abroad and it was just the best thing for me. Second, he knows full well that war is merely failure of diplomacy. Third, he’s ready to reach out to all these people and commence a cogent discussion. Fourth, he’s willing to insist that we take on a crash course in developing alternative energy sources – much like the Manhattan Project – and I think he’ll do it, and everybody’s sort of getting the picture on that. Now the question is do we make it about the issues or do we make it about personalities?
Democrats tend to fall in love, Republicans fall in. It’s a very interesting election, and I’m quite happy with the candidate, and I think we’ve got a real good shot. Let’s just cross our fingers, because from a European standpoint, from having lived there observing here, everyone would be overjoyed to have someone come up who actually speaks not in double talk and not in total American self-interest, but in our inter-dependency as to global difficulties. Some can be settled easily and some of them are gonna be hard, but this bellicose throwing our weight around is really, really annoying, and brings to mind what it must have been like to travel around Europe in the Forties. At the aiports all they need is the German Shepherds and we’re there!
It’s certainly an important election – in my lifetime I can’t remember having so many people with so much hope in this country that America makes the right decision.
As Sam Cooke so beautifully put it, “[Sings] There’s a change gonna come.” We’re on the way. Don’t give up on us yet.
Words By Simon Harper
